Loveboat in 서울

𝟚𝟙

The Korean folk song that played tonight weaves like a ribbon through the folds of my brain. A dance unfurls to join it: a double ring of girls in colorful dresses, hands joined, swirling in opposite directions around a pair of lovers. My body wants to dance.

There's no hope of sleep when I'm like this.

I'm alone in my empress canopy, legs tangled in cotton sheets. Moonlight slants through the openwork carvings, illuminating horses, fierce warriors in battle, my striped duvet. The air is hot and still, and under my head, my down pillow is soaked with sweat.

It's my second night in Aunty Yumi's mansion, after a weekend's precarious balancing act: Sohee ignoring Kang to flirt with a distant cousin and me avoiding Joohyuk while pretending to be his girlfriend—all while making dumplings in Aunty Yumi's airy kitchen, playing Go with stones, getting magical massages on a padded table, and sitting down to crystal-and-silver meals of chopped lobster, oyster pancakes, and the freshest abalone on the island.

Tonight, though, my head throbs from the rounds of shots I drank with Joohyuk's cousins and aunts and uncles. The teasing about grandbabies, until Joohyuk had to intervene, all right, that's enough.

I sit up and grab the tablet on the bedside table, a loaner from Aunty Yumi. Its white glow stabs at my eyes as I search the internet for variations on "dance scholarship," reading up on the USA Performing Arts Scholarship and Young Arts Foundation.

But as I told Joohyuk, everything is long past due.

My movement sets my pointe shoes swaying from their ribbons on the post from which they hang, knocking softly against the wood. I tug them down and lie back on my pillow and tuck them to my chest, like Dezy, my old stuffed bunny. My audition tomorrow—that's what I need to focus on. The last dance of Suzy Bae.

I squeeze my eyes shut and think piqué turns: toe to knee then down, turning, spotting, turning, spotting, single, single, single, single, double.

What would it take for you to be a dancer?

You could call them—

I drop my shoes, which make double thuds below.

I've let Joohyuk in too far. Now his voice and hope have intertwined themselves into the most intimate secrets of my heart, along with that almost-kiss that I can't stop coming back to—but I need to stop. To untangle this ribbon that has somehow tied me to him without my being aware.

The grandfather clock chimes a solo. One o'clock. Sleep really is hopeless. Sliding from my mattress, I grab my new silk nightrobe—the present from Aunty Yumi for the girlfriend who isn't even the girlfriend. Still, I slip it on and press open my oak-paneled door, then pad barefoot over the runners down the hallway.

Everything in the dark feels muted and lonely. The stone and glass, the Asian vases, all meticulously dusted and arranged. Giant seashells remind me of Sihyeon, who loves them. But the scents teakwood and white flower oil reminds me of Eomma—and something recoils inside me.

In the living room, an orange cinder sparks. A fire burns in the grate, though the air is hot and humid. A log snaps, sending up a cloud of embers. The scent of ashes reaches my nose.

Someone's awake.

A thread of light glimmers a few feet from the fire.

Kang's back is toward me. His black shirt is rumpled, as if he'd slept in it. In his hand is an ivory-handled tanto—worn by an actual samurai of feudal Japan, according to a cousin, soldiers who didn't fall on their swords like the Romans did, but disemboweled themselves.